The Shit Hits the Fan

Three big stories, all from yesterday, are walloping Trumpworld.

Image courtesy of Axios

Three separate developments yesterday rocked Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the White House itself.

First, after Kristi Noem’s disastrous congressional testimony earlier this week—where she not only likely perjured herself but actually pointed the finger at Trump to cover her own ass—her long-expected firing finally arrived.

Second, after Pete Hegseth came under renewed criticism for his callous treatment of dead U.S. service members, the Pentagon must now answer for why it leveled a girls’ school in Iran, killing 175 people, mostly students.

Finally, the White House is sweating the release of three formerly undisclosed FBI Form 302 reports, in which a victim interviewed four times by authorities described how Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a teenage girl.

Each of these stories could be a deep dive. For now, here’s a quick recap of why they’ve got the Trump regime playing desperate defense. It’s scrambling to keep things from spiraling further out of control, as Democrats turn up the heat.

Swapping one incompetent fool for another

The first cabinet-level firing of Trump’s second term was, to no one’s surprise, Kristi Noem, the now former secretary of Homeland Security. Noem had already been under pressure over her mismanagement of the department.

As one administration official relayed to a Fox reporter, her firing was based on a series of mishaps, including

• The fallout from the deaths of U.S. citizens in Minnesota;

• Her $200 million ad campaign where the contract went to a political crony;

• Allegations of infidelity with her top aide, Corey Lewandowski;

• Mismanagement of her staff; and

• Her constant feuding with the heads of CBP and ICE.

The drama surrounding her leadership, the White House concluded, overshadowed and distracted from the administration’s immigration agenda, which the official insisted would continue in full force.

Trump may finally have decided to remove Noem after she testified that her nine figure ad campaign had been approved by him personally, a claim he denied.

It’s one thing to mess up badly in your job. That doesn’t actually make you any different than any other Trump cabinet member.

But it’s another thing entirely to throw Trump under the bus when pressed. Here’s the moment, during questioning by GOP Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, that likely spelled the end of Noem’s short tenure at DHS:

It’s a good reminder of why congressional hearings actually matter, especially when members of the same party decide that enough is enough.

Trump fired Noem in a social media post (because of course he did) that dropped while Noem was giving live remarks, meaning she remained on camera for a rather humiliating amount of time believing she was still DHS Secretary while the chyrons broadcast her firing. Then, in true irony, she attempted to quote George Orwell (as one does?), saying “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalves.”

That rather disturbing quote is not actually from Orwell, but her attributing it to him is, well, pretty darned Orwellian.

Trump knows better than to completely fire his subordinates these days, lest they go write a tell-all book as many in his past administration have. Instead, he put Noem out to a newly-cleared pasture as “Special Envoy” to the “Shield of the Americas Western Hemisphere Division,” which The Daily Show observed feels like a name assembled with refrigerator magnets.

Trump named Noem’s replacement in that same Truth Social post. Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma is now up for the job, but he first has to be confirmed by the Senate, and that might depend on whether Democrats’ demands to rein in ICE are met.

Like Noem, Mullin has little experience running an organization like Homeland Security. But that’s never stopped Trump from making some wild appointments. Trump values loyalty above all else and seems to prefer surrounding himself with aides who are even more intellectually challenged than he is.

Callous, cruel and murderous

Pete Hegseth was already wading in hot waters for having treated U.S. casualties as a P.R. problem rather than a grave tragedy. As Tom Nichols of The Atlantic observed, after an Iranian drone strike on a makeshift operation center in Kuwait killed six Americans, Hegseth went before cameras to complain about how the press was making the military look bad.

The defense secretary, the man who is supposed to carry this news to the American public and mourn with them, instead whined about the unfairness of it all. “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it,” Hegseth told the reporters, military personnel, and civilians gathered this morning in the Pentagon. “The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step. As I said Monday, the mission is laser-focused.”

Yesterday, Hegseth demonstrated that he learned nothing from that misstep. He gave a presser where he laid into the press once more rather than acknowledge the gravity of the loss of the soldiers and the actual responsibility of the press to seek answers for their loved ones, who want to know why there was no warning of the attack and no fortification of the site.

Hegseth growled, “This is what the fake news misses. We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate, but when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news.”

Then the Pentagon came under even further scrutiny following an explosive New York Times report. The paper investigated the destruction of an Iranian girls’ school and concluded that a U.S. bomb had struck it, killing some 175 people, mostly students. The regime now has the blood of Iranian children on its hands, even while failing to articulate a consistent reason for the war.

The conclusion of the report will likely fuel anger at the U.S. across Iran and undermine claims that the White House actually cares about the people it says it is trying to liberate.

The DOJ finally released the highly damning FBI forms

Thursday evening, DOJ watchers noted that it had released three FBI 302 interview reports, with redactions, that had recently become the subject of intense public scrutiny. These forms summarize FBI interviews with witnesses and victims and are routinely used by investigators to document potentially criminal allegations.

The missing forms were first reported by Roger Sollenberger. These were not anonymous tip reports but detailed FBI interview summaries. As I noted in an earlier piece, these previously missing documents were of a very different and, to the White House, far more dangerous nature than mere anonymous tip reports. They were explosive and credible enough for the FBI to include on a PowerPoint slide under the header “Trump” and to conduct follow-up witness interviews, including apparently with Epstein’s “Cellmate.”

But the record, as produced, was woefully incomplete. As I noted at the time:

A critical missing piece is the FBI interview and 302 form containing the victim’s statements about Trump. That’s what presumably would have led to the bombshell allegation being included in the slideshow and subsequent emails about a “Cellmate interview,” as well as a follow-up and corroboration with the friend of the victim.

Now three of those missing 302 forms are out, and they contain highly graphic details about Trump’s presence, communications, actions and sex crimes against a minor. The victim also credibly describes threats upon her life and well-being, as well as extortion against her family, and said was reluctant to provide details against Trump because she believed nothing could be done to hold Trump accountable due to the amount of time that had lapsed.

That adds significantly to the credibility of her allegations because she has no motivation to lie. If anything, she had every incentive not to cooperate at all.

Key excerpts include the following direct allegation of sexual assault (reader discretion advised):

They also include specific language Trump reportedly would use when discussing girls with Epstein.

The victim further told the FBI that she believed Trump was aware of Epstein blackmailing others.

It is small wonder the DOJ withheld these reports, though the Department claims (unconvincingly) that it had withheld them because it earlier believed they were duplicates.

Notably, all of these interviews were conducted after Epstein was arrested in 2019. There was no reason at that point for this victim to tell anything but the truth, and her story was backed up by a similar story told by one of her friends, to whom she had confided.

The interviews took place before and during the month after he was found dead in his jail cell. They were finally produced just one day after the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify. Five Republicans joined all Democrats on that vote.

Insisting on accountability

There is a tendency to dismiss any forward progress against the Trump regime, with many on the left asserting (even before they’ve understood the facts fully) that nothing ever matters and that Trump and his allies will never face accountability.

That gut reaction is understandable given how often we have gotten close only to see Teflon Don skate free. He is a very slippery eel, to be certain. But it is factually inaccurate and counterproductive to our aims.

It’s sometimes helpful to zoom out and ask what it is we have been demanding and to compare that against what has been achieved so far. When we go through this exercise, we can more easily identify areas of laudable progress.

With the Department of Homeland Security, we have been demanding Kristi Noem’s firing, along with Greg Bovino’s. We have been insisting that Noem’s corruption and grift, her exploitative and racially charged ads, and her brutal overseeing of mass detention centers and the illegal, warrantless seizure of immigrants and U.S. citizens come to an end.

On each of these questions, we have scored significant gains. Federal judges have ruled on the illegality of the warrantless seizures, and Democrats have held firm on shutting down DHS entirely until their demands on ICE reforms are met. Bovino was sent packing after Minneapolis, and now Noem herself is also gone. Shady contract awards to Noem’s political cronies are now under intense congressional scrutiny, and Noem is on notice that she will face charges if the evidence shows she committed crimes.

On the bloody and illegal war against Iran, which is now several days old, there is a steep political cost that Trump, Hegseth and the GOP must now bear on top of the hundreds of lives lost and billions of dollars already spent. As I wrote earlier this week, the America First wing of the Republican Party is now in open revolt against the war. This will only deepen the electoral woes of the GOP in November should the war drag on.

And while the press concededly has often disappointed us in its coverage of Trump, with respect to the Iran war there has already been stellar reporting, without which we wouldn’t know who is to blame for the killing of scores of Iranian schoolgirls.

The latest Epstein files are a story that won’t go away for Trump, despite his best efforts to distract us from them. The latest disclosures are less than a day old, but already they are ricocheting across the internet, including with the president’s QAnon base. The Justice Department apparently tried to hide these files from the public, which has led many people to ask why. Now we know, and it’s truly bad for Trump.

It’s one thing to focus on a host of anonymous tips from a national hotline. It’s entirely another for the FBI itself to have conducted four interviews of the same witness, as well as spoken to other witnesses about the claims. It found the allegations credible enough to feature them as the lead on an internal PowerPoint slide.

The story over the cover-up isn’t yet over. While the DOJ finally produced the Form 302s themselves, they still failed to produce the FBI’s notes taken in conjunction with those reports. This only adds to the suspicion that there is even more they are trying to hide.

It is no small matter that Congress voted nearly unanimously last year to release the Epstein files. Nor is it a small matter that five GOP members of the Oversight Committee crossed party lines this week to vote with the Democrats to subpoena the U.S. Attorney General. This is only happening because there are some in the GOP, such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) who decided to put principle over party.

As Trump’s approval ratings sink further and his power dwindles, look for more Republicans to suddenly find the courage to defy his wishes. We aren’t fully there yet, as the failed War Powers Resolution demonstrates, but there are now major cracks in the Trump wall. These cracks are growing bigger, not smaller.

That’s why it’s vital to keep encouraging, rather than dismissing, the tireless efforts of certain reporters and lawmakers to press forward. We should recognize and celebrate important progress when it happens, even while remembering that getting the goods on Trump and his cronies has never been easy.

Each of us has the power to decide whether we are part of that effort, or whether we’d rather fold up our tents and give up just as our long efforts are finally starting to pay off.